


in my dreams i meet the ghosts

by plinys



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Dead People, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, M/M, Prophetic Dreams, actually its like super gen, but i have my own ships and feels, can totally be read as gen, its complicated, sort of, stannisficartweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-30 12:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Stannis dreams he dreams of the dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in my dreams i meet the ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> For the StannisFicArtWeek Prompt:  
>  _'And in my dreams I meet the ghosts of all the people who have come and gone'_ (High Hopes, Kodaline). Stannis dreams, and he does it often.
> 
> I sort of got away from the prompt, but yeah...  
> First time writing as Stannis, so there's that as well.

He never dreamed as a babe.

 Never was as foolish as Robert who would tell tales of the great things he accomplished in his dreams, of the battles he fought. Robert dreamed of the future, of gory and glory.

When Stannis dreamed for the first time, it was of a dream of shadows, voices at the edge of his consciousness, and an endless storm.

He dreamed of shipwrecks and thunder and boats breaking upon the bay, of terror and hands finding each other in the dark making final prayers to the Seven.

Stannis never prayed to the gods after that day, but he dreamed of prayers from familiar voices, prayers that went unanswered.

The nightmares would grow and fade with time, and the memories would return to him in his slumber.

His mother’s smile or cadence of his father’s voice. Visions of hunting trips or quite days, and winds whipping across Storm’s End.

When he dreamed he dreamed of the dead.

Then there’s a war and a rebellion and while he feels like starving he dreams of battlefields and fire, an endless burning that makes him wake at night to sweat soaked sheets and shaking hands.

He dreams of children hiding under their father’s beds, a young woman bleeding out in a tower, the unbearable pains of childbirth, and the smash of a hammer on the battlefield.

The faces are unfamiliar, mists and memories that he cannot place.

He knows before he hears the news of the death of the former princess and her children.

When Robert rants and raves about his sweet Lyanna’s murder or boasts of his defeat of Rhaegar, Stannis grinds his teeth to resist telling him how he already knows, how he’s heard the story before, seen it all play out.

In night terrors that had plagued him for months prior.

His dreams fade and wane and he doesn’t pray to the gods, the gods don’t deserve his prayers.

Though he stays up restless nights after he receives Selyse’s letter, and sits there staring down at the sickly child willing himself not to sleep, fearing for a dream he might have.

It never comes. Though sometimes he thinks he can hear it, a vision of what might have been, of a child half lost to the other side already.

A girl in a golden dress with dark hair and an unblemished face, he wakes to see a child that lives, but wearing the reminder upon her flesh.

Later he dreams of blood and stillborn babes, of the tears of his wife who promises that she will give him a son time and time again.

The dreams always beat her promises.

And at night he sees them, he dreams of children, boys playing with wooden swords and laughing, tumbling in the gardens and declaring themselves lords and knights. Their faces are unclear, but there’s a stock of dark hair on their heads and their robes are a familiar golden hue. But they’re gone too fast for him to catch a clear picture.

Of the sons that might have belonged to him.

Too much time spent chasing glimpses of a past that could never be.

He tries to make the present better, to push his dreams out of his mind.

He discovers things, things that ought to be shared, but he knows they’re found out too late. He dreams of poisons and sickness, he dreams of lions with blood red muzzles.

Stannis flees to Dragonstone before his dreams can catch up with him, and sends his condolences to the mourning woman of the Eyrie.

He dreams of stags, boars, a spilling cup of wine, and feels the slightest bit of remorse.

By time Ned’s letter has arrived it’s too late, he’s already dreamt of the red blade and the crying girl being held back by the guards.

He hates sleeping now, because he dreams of boys who played at being brothers when they were not, and he’s not jealous, jealousy is beneath him, but his dreams and unwelcome.

Stannis fights past his jealousy and thinks only of his duty of what must be done.

Nobody bothers to question his need for war councils that run late into the evening or his unwillingness to sleep by his wife’s side. Sleeping means dreaming and dreaming just brings him anger.

Then there’s Cressen, the good old fellow, who had been much like a father to him, almost more than his own had.

Stannis doesn’t dream of his death, not now that he’s seen it with his own eyes. Instead, he dreams of his lessons as a child or when he caught the flu and was nursed back to health.

He dreams of sadness and weakness and regrets.

As the war begins, the regret begins to grow and fester beyond his eyelids. It is easy to deny them when there is light about him.

The woman tells him that the night is dark and full of terrors, but she has no idea of terrors he could tell, the one’s that come to him in the dark night.

He sleeps only now with the light of a candle by his side, for fire washes the darkness away.

Though not all darkness can be so easily pushed away.

Stannis knows as soon as it has happened, whether by his own nightly terrors or by the Lady’s shadows, he feels it, the shadow’s blade, the coolness of the shadow, and the reflection in a cracked mirror.

Night after night he dreams of his killing his brother, and wakes in regrets.

When he doesn’t dream of his death, his traitorous mind brings him memories he had thought long lost.

Stannis mourns him not for the man he grew to be, he dreams not of the arrogant man who offered him a peach and took his army. Instead, Stannis dreams of a child far too thin for his own good, standing on the walls of Storm’s End insisting that Robert would be there to rescue them soon, or the boy that would run around with a tattered cloak and wooden sword dreaming of being a knight.

For Renly had always dreamed of the impossible, so blessed not to dream of the lost ones, and now his flights of fancy haunt Stannis, wide blue eyes that look up trusting into his own. Never looking at him in horror or feeling betrayed, but only the good, and every time he closes his eyes he is reminded how he killed his brother.

 The boy that he looked after when Robert played at war.

More often than not he wishes not to dream, that he could drink milk of the poppy and slip into blissful slumber.

But Stannis is far too proud for that.

He had always seen of his dreams as a curse, never quite a blessing, until that blasted battle at Blackwater Bay.

Then he searches his dreams for one face, for the only one that matters.

When they try to tell him that Davos is dead, he knows it’s not true.

Lost in the Battle of Blackwater, but not dead. He can’t say how he knows, and nobody will believe him if he says the words, so he keeps them to himself. But when he dreams of men and knights marching to their deaths burning in green flames, there is one face that he doesn’t see among the many staring back at him.

He knows that he’s alive, because he’s yet to dream about him.

Stannis only dreams about the dead.

And he has never dreamed of Davos.

Not yet, anyways. 


End file.
